The World Wide Web is the Internet's multimedia information retrieval system. In the Web environment, client machines communicate with Web servers using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is an application protocol providing users access to files (e.g., text, graphics, images, animation, sound, video, etc.) using a standard page description language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML provides basic document formatting and allows a developer to specify "links" to other servers and files. In the Internet paradigm, a network path to a server is identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) having a specified syntax for defining a network connection. Use of an HTML-compatible browser (e.g., Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer) at a client machine involves specification of a link via the URL. In response, the client makes a request to the server identified in the link and receives in return a document formatted according to HTML.
More and more Web sites contain animated sequences which are downloaded to a user's system when the user accesses the Web site. These animated sequences are often contained in graphics files, such as Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) files. The increasing size and complexity of these animated sequences increases the length of time it takes to download a Web page. Many times a user is not interested in the animated sequences. For example, many Web pages contain animated advertisements. The user may be interested in the actual contents of the Web page, but may not be interested in the animated advertisements present on the Web page. Other times, the user may be interested in some, but not all, of the animated sequences contained on a Web page.
Consequently, it would be desirable to have a system and method for controlling the downloading and display of animated sequences over a network. It would be desirable to allow a user to choose which animated sequences, if any, are downloaded and executed. It would further be desirable to give the user a preview of the animated sequences which may be selected for full downloading, in a manner which is fast, efficient, and uses little client memory or disk space.